A word given at the reading of the Great
Canon of Repentance of Venerable Andrew of Crete on Thursday of the Fifth Week
of Great Lent.
The
penitential canon of St. Andrew of Crete is read for the last time this the
year in the fifth week of Great Lent, thus closing the book on this Great Canon
until next year. The holy words of the penitential canon will be read again by
those who live until next year, and who heed these many lamentations: “Have
mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me”—by those whom the Lord blesses to meet
Great Lent next year.
In
reading this canon, we repeat the words “Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on
me” many times, and in doing so we as if see the scroll of our whole lives
unraveling, from the day of our birth, and not simply until the present day in
each of our lives, but until the day of death, and further until the day of the
final Dread Judgment of God. How does life begin for every one of us? With
crying. But there would be no suffering for the one bearing us, and the one
being born if there was no guilt or impurity. What suffering? That which cried
out in me when I, a newborn babe, began life with crying? I as yet had neither
memory nor intelligence. My nature cried out from its inherent imperfection.
Every child is born with the stamp of the ancestral sin of our forefathers and
with the inclination to sin, which is inherited by every one of us from our
forefathers. And when we, having defiled our lives by many sins, remember that
we are born with an inclination towards sin, and that our duty is to master it,
and that we cannot manage to do so, we bow our heads low at the recollection of
our first day of birth, and from our heart breaks forth this prayerful cry:
“Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!” Look, God, upon Thy poor creation,
which was born with an inclination to sin, which for many years of this earthly
life did not want to refrain from this inclination and now fears Thy righteous
judgment!
While we
were yet insensate and unconscious beings, the Lord God, our philoprogenitive
Father, led many of us to the enclosure of His Holy Church, and gave us,
Orthodox babies, the joy of receiving the grace of Holy Baptism. The Holy Church
cleansed from our souls this seal, the vestige of the hereditary sin of our
forefathers, the first people, in Holy Baptism. It made every one of us clean,
it adorned our souls in angelic clothing, it sealed us with the sign of the
Holy Cross, it cleansed and sanctified us and, to strengthen our spiritual
powers, the Holy Spirit was given to us in the Sacrament of Chrismation,
strengthening us in the spiritual life, and in the battle with temptations,
with seductions, with vices and with passions.
And when
it’s given to us think about how we have lived our lives, when we remember that
we were given freedom from this inclination towards sin already in childhood,
and that we began to defile the pure, snow-white garment of our immortal souls
already in childhood, by speaking lies, showing anger, laziness, disobedience,
and other childhood sins, then the same supplication to the Lord arises again
in the soul of every one of us, coming from that freedom from the inclination
to sin: “Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.”
The days
of our childhood and youth have flown by. We were similar to our forefathers,
the first people in Paradise, in those years when they were innocent, before
they had sinned: Before them was the tree from which it was forbidden by God to
pluck any fruit, and before us all stood, and stands, the tree of sins and
passions, from which God’s will prohibits us to pluck these fruits which
destroy our immortal souls. And, thinking about our youth, many of us are ready
to beat ourselves on the breast, recalling how we had been careless and
flippant, how we didn’t give much thought to how man should live, and how from
the days of our childhood and youth we did not accustom our sinful hearts to
fulfilling the will of God and preserving them in purity.
Perhaps
many of us would like to regain our irreversibly gone youths, to begin life
again, that our souls would not have those sins, vices, and passions which have
so greatly accumulated in our souls—but it remains only to speak with and pray
to the Lord with the words of the prophet David: Remember not the sins of my
youth, nor my transgressions (Ps. 25:7). And once again this sigh of our heart:
“Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.”
Whether
our adult years have already come, or are coming, or we have already passed
through them, they are a time when we, Orthodox people, consciously look around
ourselves, and learn from the Holy Church, its homilies, and the holy word of
God, how to live, how to look at our own lives as preparation for eternal life,
and how to protect our souls. When we look at our adult years, in which we must
consciously and bravely battle with vices and passions, and wisely use the
gifts which the Lord sends us, and patiently endure life’s blows, this
prayerful lamentation, which St. Andrew of Crete puts into heart and soul of
each of us, is ready to erupt from the depths of our hearts again: “Have mercy
on me, O God, have mercy on me.”
I know
Thy will, Lord. I want to do good, but I do evil and wickedness as before. I
know that I am not walking along the path that I should, and, yet, I do not
walk it. So many times I have promised not to repeat my sins and defile my
soul, and again I break this promise! When will this battle between my
conscience and my passions end? When will this captivity to sins and passions
end? This cry is borne to the Lord from our souls: “Touch, O Lord, my
sin-loving soul, that it would no longer serve sin, that it would not walk this
path of sin, because my heart knows that this path leads to eternal
destruction! I infect my immortal soul with sins, I drown it in a wave of
passions and lawlessness, and I must give answer before Thee, O Lord, at the
final and Dread Judgment!
And old
age is coming, or for many of us it has already come. O how fruitlessly we have
lived our lives! What have we done for eternal life? What have we done for the
salvation of our sinful souls? How should we use the remainder of the days of
our earthly lives? Will we spend them doing good works, to cleanse our hearts
from defilement with bitter tears of repentance, and fill our hearts with good
deeds at least in this remainder of days, or will passions and vices, as
before, lacerate the remainder of our days and will my eyes, as before, be
blinded by this vain sin and the stench of my passions? And again a groan
arises from the depths of our souls to the Lord: “Take, O Lord, this blindness
from my eyes, and grant that the remainder of my days may be short, and that I
may not take these sins with me with which I have defiled myself throughout my
entire life, and for which I have not been able to bring forth such repentance
as would forevermore blot out these sins from my heart!” And again, the prayer,
“Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.”
And the
last hour of this earthly life will come for every one of us. The doctor will
be powerless. Death will approach us. It is fitting if the Lord pleases to send
us the happiness of a priest with the Holy Mysteries, to bid us farewell into
life eternal. And what a prayerful groan from the heart of the dying will be
sent up to Heaven, as that which St. Andrew Crete teaches us to cry out to the
Lord with many times over: “Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!” “Grant
me, O Lord, Thy mercy in the hour of my death, that my sinful soul might leave
this body with the sentiment of the Wise Thief, with his repentance, with his
faith and with his hope in Thy mercy!”
Then our
earthly life ends, and even if our soul wants to bring confession of sins and
repentance, there’s already no one to accept this repentance and this
confession. And, perhaps, I will painfully want to return at least an hour, at
least a minute of this earthly life, that in that hour, in that minute, while
the doors of Divine Grace are not yet closed and the doors of repentance yet
open, I will weep bitter tears for my perishing soul. But it will be too late:
life is already over and no one will have the power to return one hour, or even
one minute.
And there
will be that hour when the Lord commands our bodies, returned to dust, to rise,
to unite with our immortal souls, and commands us to stand before Him (cf. Jn.
5:25, 29), before the face of His angels (cf. Mt. 25:31), before the face of
the innumerable host of God’s faithful children, holy God-pleasers, and simple
people faithful to the Lord, who were able to live and die with the Lord in
their hearts. We will stand before them with our innumerable sins, with all our
falls, and with all our filth. And in the hour of the final and Dread Judgment,
will not these words erupt from our souls, to the Righteous Judge: “Have mercy
on me, O God, have mercy on me?” This will be our last cry, which can only be
addressed to the Lord, for this judgment will be final, and after it will be
either eternal joy for Christ’s faithful children, or eternal tribulation for
unrepentant sinners and for those who have pushed Christ’s hand away, and who
lived without Christ and died without Him (cf. Mt. 25:46).
So, my
dears, the manifold repetition of this prayerful lamentation reveals our whole
life to us—from beginning to end and to the final Dread Judgment of God.
What the
Lord will say to each of us—that’s His holy will. But, while we yet live, while
we yet walk this earth, while we yet have these great and saving days of
repentance given us by the Lord, let us bring our repentance to the Lord, with
tears! Do not be ashamed of these tears, for our guardian angel collects these
tears unseen. Weep bitter tears for the transgressions we have committed, and
with these tears for our sins, draw nearer to the Lord with a prayer that He
would save us by His mercy before we die to eternal life, and that He would
cover our souls weeping before Him with His love, and that in eternal life and
at His Dread Judgment he would not recall those sins for which we here brought
repentance to the Lord with tears.
We will
not hear these repentant sighs again until Great Lent next year. But may these
holy words of the repentant canon never die in our hearts. May they live in the
days of Great Lent, when we bring our repentance, and may these wonderful words
of prayer, with which we ask forgiveness of our sins from the Lord and pardon
for eternal life, not decay throughout our lives.
I wish
you all, my sweet dears, with my whole heart, that the Lord grant you in these
days of Great Lent to bring to Him not just your contrite souls, but your souls
with tears wept for your sins, and that these tears would eternally cleanse our
sinful filth; that we would not take our sins with us into the life of the
future age.
Sermon by
Metropolitan Nicholai
(Yarushevich)
Translated by Jesse Dominick
March 30, 2017
March 30, 2017
CONVERSATION